


All The Pieces (That Make Up The Whole)

by christiant



Series: Beyond The Breach [5]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 21:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2084163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christiant/pseuds/christiant





	1. Chapter 1

They both have odd names.

Tyler Colton Armstrong had been the brother who'd saved her dad's life when they were kids and damned his only niece to an aggravated existence.

And Jeanie?

She'd been nicknamed after the first Kill Bill movie, when her mom got married. She'd grown accustomed to Tai-Tai calling her daughter 'Jeanie' and having a Jeanie Belle was too much fun to just let it go by.

It's not important now.


	2. Chapter 2

Jeanie is small and athletic. 

She was always beautiful, and sometimes it seemed that she forgot it.

Tai is skinny and funny, but also rude and cold.

Jeanie's idealized image of her comes from love, not nostalgia.


	3. Chapter 3

LQTS had kept her out of track and cheerleading when it'd been discovered, but it doesn't keep her out of the action in the newly formed PPDC. 

Not when she's "drift compatible" and her best friend has a strong healthy body despite her constant abuse to it.


	4. Chapter 4

They go on an interview post-academy pre-Jaeger, still high off of a neural handshake to demonstrate what makes them "drift compatible". 

They play checkers, battleship, and charades to show off the way their minds sink and swim in each other. 

It is not surprising that they become the face of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.


	5. Chapter 5

She gets the tattoo on a whim, " _nec temere, nec timide_ ," " **neither reckless, nor timid** " on her hip in sprawling letters to remind herself to be brave when the apocalypse is upon them.

She keeps it close in their makeshift academy for whatever pet project the real geeks had come up with that had been frying peoples' brains.

Jeanie is not with her, even though they'd been pulled in together. 

J-Tech and Tactics are a couple buildings down from each other, but it feels like a different continent.


	6. Chapter 6

(der Jager - The Hunter  
die Jager - The Hunters)

"Si vales, valeo" "when you are strong, _I am strong_ ," she has pressed into Tai's tags [along with a cute James Bond reference that would make her laugh].  
They are strong separately, but **unstoppable** together.


	7. Chapter 7

Jeanie is there the last time Tai sees her father. It is at Lady D's launch and they are on the fringes of the party.

He is espousing the same bullshit that made Jeanie hate him as a child and Tai resent him as she blossomed into womanhood.

No one but the press is surprised when she slaps him for all she's worth, because they are the only ones too far away to hear him undermine their accomplishments and their worth as women.


	8. Chapter 8

Tendo Choi and Tyler Armstrong are not friends whatsoever. 

In the early days of J-Tech it is easy to pit minority-majorities against each other and both are glad when she pilots Saint Jude.

She inexplicably (yet tenderly) kisses his cheek when she is diagnosed, and he cries softly at her makeshift (yet well-attended) Viking funeral.


	9. Chapter 9

Tai wakes up twelve hours after being rescued from atop the slaughtered Kaiju, screaming and disoriented, desperately trying to slide or scramble her way back to being Lady D's arms.


	10. Chapter 10

Tai enjoys Vanessa's company before she is Mrs. Gottlieb and an expecting mother.

Long before.

It was never a secret, but Hermann is surprised to see his wife in a post-war photo album, smiling wickedly in a way that he'd never seen her, with a long dead girl in the basket of her bike.

The corner of her mouth turns up sadly at the reminder, and it unsurprising when it the picture appears in a frame a few days later.


End file.
